Reports have now surfaced that Sprint will be a part of the iPhone 5 release date. Yes, it does appear that Sprint will be launching the new iPhone 5:
"Sprint Nextel Corp. will begin selling the iPhone 5 in mid-October, people familiar with the matter said, closing a huge hole in the No. 3 U.S. carrier’s lineup and giving Apple Inc. another channel for selling its popular phone. The timing, however, indicates Apple’s new iPhone will hit the market later than expected and too late to contribute to sales in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in September. Most observers had expected the device to arrive next month. Top U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless and No. 2 AT&T Inc. will begin selling the phone in mid-October as well, two of the people said. Sprint had more than 52 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter, compared with 106 million for Verizon and nearly 99 million for AT&T." - Source: Wall Street JournalFor some time now, rumors have been circulating that Apple would be releasing new iPhones across all major carriers. It only makes sense that Apple would choose this path in consideration of the inroads Google has made with their Android operating system on the smartphone market share.
Competition is the name of the game and you can bet Apple will do whatever they can to remain competitve. In the past, they've been able to remain competitive since the iPhone was a far superior device. Now, there are many top Android smartphones, across all of the major carriers, that are offering similar smartphone experiences.
No doubt, Sprint customers will be happy with this announcement as were many Verizon customers who anxiously awaited the new iPhone arrival on their network!